Winnipeg Jets Rick Bowness hangs 'em up

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The Rick Bowness era in Winnipeg is over.

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The 69-year-old head coach is retiring after 38 seasons in the NHL, the Jets announced Monday. There is no word yet on his replacement.

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Bowness is coming off perhaps his most impressive season yet, leading the Jets to a franchise record 52 wins, including a team record 25 on the road.

Last week, the New Brunswick product was named one of three Jack Adams Award finalists as an NHL head coach for the first time in his career, only to walk away from the game just days later.

Bowness' final season was marked by personal struggles that saw him removed from the team twice, once when his wife fell ill and once for his own medical procedure.

During his first two years with the Jets, he contracted COVID, which lingered.

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Both of his seasons will be remembered as a rollercoaster on the ice.

Bowness led the Jets to the playoffs in his first year, taking over a team that had missed the playoffs when former coach Paul Morris called on the team to hold its players accountable.

He was so frustrated by Vegas' meek, first-round exit that he called out his team for their inability to bounce back and called their effort abhorrent, prompting several players, including former captain Blake Wheeler, to call him out. subsequent exit interviews.

Having mended fences over the summer and benefited from roster changes, Bowness has regained the trust of his team and has high hopes for this year's playoffs.

Allowing the fewest goals in the NHL, the Jets were poised to make a postseason run, only to fall in five games to Colorado.

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“So what did they bring me to do?” Change the culture,” Bowness said last Thursday. “This organization, this team had a bad reputation. We have improved this. We fixed that. We had to give the team a good match to win. We did it. We had to get this team back to the playoffs. We did it.

“Thus, we have made great progress. But now we have to take it to the next level.”

He was coy when asked about his future after the series.

“I know what I'm going to do,” he said. “I know what I want to do. It comes out. We will let you know.”

Bowness compiled a 98-57-9 record, the eighth team in the NHL on an extraordinary resume that put him on the bench for 2,726 games as a head coach or assistant, more than anyone in league history.

His teams have reached the Stanley Cup Finals three times, most recently when he was head coach in Dallas in 2020, but he has never won it.

His first game in the NHL booth came as an assistant with the original Jets in 1984-85.

“I still love it. “There is still a passion for it,” he said last week. “As I told the players, every day in this league is a blessing. Never, ever, waste a day in this league. I never have and never will. I love this game. It was my life.”

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